Thursday, November 15, 2012

The wrong reasons

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), also the losing vice presidential candidate with Mitt Romney, gave an interview to a local station in Wisconsin and summed up why they lost:

"I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race," said Ryan to local station WISC-TV in his first post-election interview... Ryan, though, said that the election was not a referendum on his budget proposals and ideas on reforming entitlement programs."I don't think we lost it on those budget issues, especially on Medicare — we clearly didn't lose it on those issues," he said.

Nice dog-whistle there with the "urban areas" comment; we'd have won if all those minorities — y'know, the folks whose votes we were trying to suppress — hadn't turned up.

And yes, Romney-Ryan did lose on the budget issues, because a combined 60% of those polled at the exits said they wanted to see tax rates increased on the rich or for everyone.

Mr. Ryan hedged his bets in the election and also ran for his seat in Wisconsin and won, so he'll be around for a while. I suspect the next time we'll hear from him is when he takes a little trip to Iowa about a year from now.